Tip For Running Cables In Tight Spaces

[BlowingOldBoots]

I have been helping with the rewire of my boat and have found a good way to run wires or messenger twine. I have 1.5 mm Birch faced ply which is sold in 5' x 5' sheets. The ply is easily cut with scissors and the original purpose was to make templates with. However, if a strip 1 cm wide is cut it can be used to find a passage behind bulkhead and headlining, for example. It is both stiff and supple which allows it to bend around 90 degrees over about 2cm. I often find that once I have managed to get the messenger where I need it, the stiffness allows messenger to be moved backwards and forwards in an arc to find the hole that the wire must exit from. The end of the birch ply strip can be snipped about 2 cm long to grip the messenger twine / wire. It transformed many awkward runs to the point where it was a piece of cake. Some picture below where I ran a messenger between the new light bezel to the bulkhead where the trim will hide the remainder of the run to the overhead light power cable. In this case once I had the messenger at the exit, a bit of wiggling placed the end of the messenger close to the exit point,I then used some Monel wire to hook the green twine and pulled it through. The cable was attached and pulled through the narrow gap.

Hope this helps.









All images hosted on Flickr

[wully]

Neat trick!

For sure you need something for running wires, especially if some choob of a previous owner has pulled out the ' rabbits' or 'messengers' that the builders live in the conduits ( sometimes, I know on my boat that some wires will be impossible to re-run)

I have an electricians flat wire on a reel for those awkward jobs.

[pagoda]

There is space in several of the conduits in our boat, but getting anything new in there is a challenge. I have a reel of the flat hard sparkie's wire at home, but managed to borrow a dinghy wire shroud (4mm) recently.
That was just the ticket as it wiggled past all the other stuff - and the bends quite easily. Plenty long as well.
The guy rigging his dinghy was hugely amused...

Graeme

[bilbo]

That's interesting. I have new wiring to run, and I'm learning late in life that struggling with the wrong tools is a mug's game. So now I have both a 15m. 'Am-Steel' reel of flat spring steel wire - called, I believe, a 'fish wire' - with an 'ook on the end AND a 3.3m. grp 'Cable Rod Kit', for much the same task. Neither are particularly good at negotiating small-radius bends, and so I use a more flexible 'leader' made of small-diameter coiled spring taped on.

[mm5aho]

I once used a tape measure from which the end stop had fallen off. Drilled a hole in end and attached a hook. Found it goes round bends really well, until I had one that went two directions 90 degrees apart! It only went on 2 dimensions not three!